


Stop Monkeying Around

by idioticfangirl



Series: The Avengers Team-Building Shenanigans [13]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: M/M, Pietro Maximoff Lives, Stony - Freeform, Team Bonding, Team Dynamics, Team Feels, Teambuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-12
Updated: 2015-06-12
Packaged: 2018-04-04 03:12:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,936
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4123609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/idioticfangirl/pseuds/idioticfangirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As a punishment for Parker being an idiot, the whole team is sent to the zoo.  Only to visit, Fury isn't sticking them all in cages (...yet)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stop Monkeying Around

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Dreiwochenwach](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dreiwochenwach/gifts).



The next Avengers outing was more to get back at Peter than any form of team-working. It was dressed up as something that 'the whole team would enjoy', which to them meant that they were all going to hate it, but the real reason that it happened was Peter's blatant disregard for Fury's rules. He had got bored one night and gone swinging around the city, and it was just his luck that that night there were creepy supervillains at work (Doctor Doom again, couldn't the Fantastic Four keep him under control), so that he managed to get kidnapped and the entire team was woken at 3 in the morning to save him.

Instead of getting angry and yelling, Fury just smiled his ominous smile, clapped him on the back and left everyone to sleep.

Two days later, a trip to the zoo was announced, to Peter's obvious discomfort and everyone else's general enthusiasm. They piled onto the coach, chattering about their favourite animals and being more excited than usual over the prospect of a team building exercise. Even Tony, though he acted otherwise, was looking forward to the trip.

"Why are we here?" Tony groaned, almost before they got off the coach. Steve looked physically pained at the idea of spending the entire day with Tony complaining, but said nothing and shepherded them all into the queue for tickets, past the monkey cage that was put in front of the reception to give people something to look at and the bird enclosures. It was a weekday, so the line wasn't very long, and before they knew it they were buying tickets.

"Hi, yep, I'll have twelve tickets please," he smiled at the receptionist, who nodded before frowning.

"Sir, there's only eleven of you." Steve spun around, doing a quick headcount, and concluded that she was right, there was only eleven. He checked, and was more frustrated than surprised that Tony was already missing.

"Yeah," he sighed, "still twelve tickets. Uh," he searched desperately for someone vaguely competent, "Sam! Sam, collect the tickets, pay the money, please don't lose anyone or let anyone die." Sam was too shocked to react, which he took as a chance to leave and search for Tony.

"Stark!" he called, fully prepared to chase after the coach if he had somehow managed to sneak back on, "Stark, where the hell are you?" This was ridiculous, Tony was a grown man and they were at a damn zoo, what was he so worried about? Even if, logically, it was stupid, Steve still fought to retain the sense of panic that washed over him, only to be replaced by complete relief when Tony turned around from where he was watching the monkeys.

"Yeah, Cap? Cap? What's wrong?"

"Where the hell did you go?"

Tony pointed. "Monkeys," he explained, as though it should have been obvious.

"Tony, we're going to a damn zoo! If you just let us get through the gate, we can look at the monkeys then!"

"We get to see the monkeys first?"

"Promise not to walk off, and I will stand in front of the monkey enclosure for the entire day."

Singing 'this is real love', Tony meandered over to the kiosk, with Steve behind him, checking his watch and wondering at what point he could leave.

 

It became obvious as soon as they had entered the actual zoo that they were going to have to traverse the entire complex to see every animal. By some miracle of nature, they each had a different favourite animal, and they were all on opposite sides of the zoo, so without some careful planning they would end up performing a slightly more interesting version of a marathon. 

The planning immediately went to shit. Tony demanded that they see the monkeys, and, having promised to spend the entire day in front of them, Steve couldn't exactly say no. Whoever had designed the zoo had clearly designed it to involve as much walking as possible, so they had to walk all the way to the middle of the zoo to please an adult superhero who was acting like a three year old. On the bright side, Tony had stopped complaining about being in a zoo, and actually seemed to be enjoying the scenic walk past the animal enclosures.

For someone who was trying desperately to be the responsible adult, Steve spent most of his time stopping. Not to stare at the animals, although he did that, but to ask, "How did they get it in the cage? Are they happy in the cages?" while Tony explained to him about how enclosures were much bigger now and yeah, they seemed happy enough.

"Look, Wanda!" Pietro called when they got within seeing distance of the monkeys, pointing at the monkey cage, "It's where you belong!" Five seconds, a flash of red light and an upturned dustbin later, he was on the floor while a load of children clapped and pointed. 

Steve feared that they would have to stand in front of the monkeys forever, so he wandered off slightly to see the gorillas close by. They were better than the monkeys, he decided, less excitable and loud and jumpy. Monkeys were a lot like Tony, really, except without all of his many good points. Slightly annoyed with his tendency to include Tony in every though, he returned his attention back to the gorillas, focusing so intently that he jumped when Natasha, came up behind him and said, "Stark's got bored so we're moving on, Cap." He nodded, clinging to last shreds of dignity as they set off for the next enclosure, whatever they came across first.

Since they had managed to stumble into the Africa section of the zoo, the next animals that they stopped in front of were the elephants and giraffes. Bucky stared up at them in wonder, with maybe a little horror mixed in, as he said, "They're so big! How do they get so big?" Bruce immediately launched into a spiel about adaptation and variation and environments, while Bucky nodded along and pretended that he understood. Next to them, Vision was also gazing at them.

"Such wonderful feats of engineering," he whispered.

"They're not engineered?" Peter replied, from a safe distance back, looking fearfully at the giraffe like it was going to spit fire. Vision shook his head but did not deign to reply, leaving everyone to wonder whether the animals were really robots in disguise, an uncomfortable thought.

"Where are those children going?" Thor asked, pointing to the meerkat enclosure, where the children could go under the enclosure and put their head up through little windows to see in, "Are they being sacrificed to the mighty meerkats?"

Clint snorted with laughter, clapping Thor on the back and saying, "Come on buddy, I'll show you."

A few minutes later, Thor bounced out, excitedly asking Steve, "Can we buy one? Look at them, look at them!" He proceeded to drag the entire team to see the meerkats, still babbling about how he was going to buy them. It wasn't until Tony gave up and bought a giant meerkat fluffy toy for him that he agreed to move on to other animals. No-one really minded though, since the meerkats were cute.

Everything went without incident, with the team discovering that both Steve and Natasha really liked watching deer bound gracefully across fields, until there was an ungodly scream from Peter.

"It spat on me!" he squealed, trying (unsuccessfully) to hide behind Pietro and Sam, whilst pointing at an alpaca, "It spat on me! It wants me dead! Hide me!"

Pietro and Sam failed at trying not to laugh as they shielded Peter from the alpaca, which seemed more disgruntled at the pitch of the scream than plotting anyone's death, to be honest. Peter resolutely refused to come out from behind the two, even after they were way past the alpaca and on to more dangerous animals, like the tigers. Eventually, Pietro agreed to protect Peter from all of the animals, so Peter made another appearance from behind their backs, sticking close to Pietro for the rest of the day 'just in case'.

They went into the reptile and bug world next, which was in a dark building with creepy animals on every side. Pietro got sidetracked by the snakes, which he found interesting, and he and Peter amused themselves seeing whether they were parselmouths. Natasha, on the other hand, made a beeline for the massive tarantulas, and a few seconds later had one on her hand that was big enough to nearly fall off. 

"Living up to your name there!" Clint called, which confused everyone who wasn't an Avenger as they tried to work out if her name was Tarantula or something. Sam and Wanda wandered (AN: I couldn't resist) over to the aquarium next door, because for some reason Sam found fish the most interesting of all of the animals in the entire zoo, and also because the penguins were doing a show. Slowly but surely, the rest of the Avengers came too, so that by the end of the show there was a group of superheroes completely entranced by penguins swimming.

To Peter's consternation, the next place they entered was the lemur walk, where they walked through tress surrounded by lemurs on all sides, including above. He ended up pressed so close to Pietro that even the little children walking with them asked their mum 'if they were boyfriends', but everyone else was too amused by the lemurs to care.

"There is a lemur on my shoulder!" Wanda said suddenly, stopping dead. Everyone turned around, ready to brush the lemur off if she was scared, but instead Wanda was grinning widely, staring at the lemur on her in astonishment. "I am in love with this lemur!" she announced happily, not moving until the lemur decided it was done with her and swung off to join its friends.

Despite her newfound love for lemurs, Wanda also discovered that she loved animals that were basically the complete opposite of the cute and cuddly ones, komodo dragons. She stood by the enclosure and watched them waddle about, flicking their tongues out, while Bruce spent ages staring at his favourite animals, Galapagos tortoises, even though they literally did not move for the entire time.

Having stopped by the cheetahs and African hunting dogs for a while, because they were Pietro's favourite, it was nearly time to go. There was just one place left to go, at Clint's insistence, the bird emporium. No-one was really sure why Clint was so eager to go there, but they went along with it anyway because he was so eager.

They spread out inside the bird house, each preferring to watch a different species of bird fluttering about, until Clint called them over.

"Listen to this," he ordered, standing outside the parrot cage, "come on, say it!"

"Clint is amazing," cawed the bird. Steve and Natasha groaned.

"Yes!" Clint punched the air, "Bow down to me bitches, I am the bird whisperer!"

Steve ushered everyone out before Clint taught the bird to swear. He may have been a little too late.

Exhausted from their walk all around the zoo, everyone walked back to the coach. Well, everyone except Tony, who had hitched a lift on Steve's back after complaining that he was too tired and lazy to do this any more.

 

"You're not going to vanish at night again, are you, Peter?" Fury asked threateningly when they got back.

"No sir," Peter agreed, fearing where they would be sent if he did.

**Author's Note:**

> Seeing as I'm planning on doing a lot more of these, if anybody wants to give me any suggestions for anything the Avengers could do, I'll do them. As you've seen, I produce these really fast, and have no problem with ridiculous scenarios, so literally anything you want is fine by me, just comment or email me kitty122011@hotmail.co.uk


End file.
